On Wednesday morning, a Mylar sheet the size of a boxing ring should pop out of a satellite that’s the size of a loaf of bread and make life for anyone who wants to launch a little cubesat in the future far easier. That is, if nothing else goes wrong. Backed by the Bill-Nye headed Planetary Society, LightSail’s mission is to prove that solar sails, which capture momentum from photons and turn it into a constant, if small, amount of momentum for the spacecraft, are viable for spacecraft in low-Earth orbit. Small satellites that are so cheaply and easily deployed from larger rockets, called cubesats, have had a propulsion problem—putting thrusters and fuel in the payload compartment makes rocket owners understandably nervous. A solar sail, which is mostly just a large, light-weight reflective surface, is a possible solution to that problem.

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